onifre writes:
But why intelligence? It has not proven dominance for a very long time. Dinosuars were giant dummies by our measure of intelligence, and they lived way longer than us? And would have continued to do so had an asteroid not hit the planet.
Agreed. I must admit that in my list of dominant traits intelligence is the baby of the group.
However, I would also say that Dinosuars
were developing intelligence. Smaller raptor-like dinos were getting smarter. Would they ever develop intelligence as you're defining it here? I suppose that's impossible to know. My stance, though, is yes... they would have. It's not like mammals started from nothing. They got a good base from the dinosuars to start from. I don't see it as too much of a stretch to have the dinos actually continue on the intelligence path instead of mammals if we take away the asteroid or other disastrous occasion.
I know we can only assume we'll survive but how do we know too much intelligence doesn't lead to our demise?
Point taken. I would say this is the largest blow to my position. If we look at the facts of human history (war escalation up to nuclear bombs and the
ability to destroy the entire planet....), it almost seems inevitable that we will destory ourselves. Of course, there have been inroads of movement in the keep-the-peace side of things... but my arguement depends on looking at history and extrapolating into a straight line. If we take human's war history and extrapolate into a straight line... we're dead
I suppose "we'll see?" Or, more likely, we probably won't 'cause you and I will likely be long gone before any of this is figured out.
Yeah, me too. But I'm slowly being able to accept it more and more. And at this point, don't really mind the thought of being alone.
Ah... No, I don't mind the thought of being alone either. If there is other intelligence out there, and they're anything like us (currently)... it would certainly be safer for us to be alone, anyway... :]